The Setting of the Sun
by Rokesmith
Summary: AU: In post-war Tokyo, young soccer player Ken Hidaka hires private detective Youji Kudou to investigate match fixing and sends him down a path of betrayal and murder in search of answers to questions he hasn't even asked.
1. The Bargain of the Century

**The Setting of the Sun**  
Rokesmith

**Disclaimer: **Weiss Kreuz, its characters, indices etcetera belong to Takehito Koyasu, Kyoko Tsuchiya and Project Weiss. This fanfic was written for fun rather than profit and any resemblances to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. Raymond Chandler's novels are the property of Random House.

**Author's Note:** This piece of fanfiction is my attempt at a full and as faithful as possible loving homage to work of Raymond Chandler in his Philip Marlowe private detective stories (_The Big Sleep_, _Farewell, My Lovely_, _The High Window_, _The Lady in the Lake_, _The Little Sister_ and _The Long Goodbye_). In fact, it might be easier to describe it as a crossover, transplanting Weiss' Tokyo into the same world as Philip Marlowe's Los Angeles. It is set in 1947, but does not attempt to give an accurate portrayal of post-war Tokyo anymore than Chandler wanted to write about real pre- and post-war LA. It contains elements borrowed from most of the novels listed above, but adapted to fit the Weiss characters. If you enjoy this, I really recommend you look up Chandler's books. I hope I've done them justice here, but I could never match them.

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Chapter One: The Bargain of the Century

The office is on the fourth floor of a building in Shibuya that's only still here because no one's gotten around to demolishing it yet. Take the elevator up and walk half way down a corridor painted by a committee with a really cruel sense of humour and you'll find a door with _Youji Kudou, Investigator_ painted on it by a man convinced that his next job would be writing haikus for the Emperor. The office to the left sells insurance. The office on the right is a theatrical agent this month. Last month it sold office supplies. Have some fun wondering what it'll be next month.

Through the middle door is a waiting area that smells of old cigarettes and older coffee. There are three chairs that don't match and a small table with a couple of newspapers on them. Read one if you've forgotten what happened last year. There's another door with _Private_ written on it by the same guy, who's still waiting for his call. On the other side of that there's a desk, a chair, some cabinets and a window with a view of the billboard across the street. There'll also be a man in one of three suits who'll smoke as he listens to your problems. Then he'll solve them for you, and he'll ask you for nothing more than thirty-five thousand yen a day plus expenses. He's the bargain of the century.

The clouds that had been threatening for the last few days had finally arrived, and they'd brought friends. The rain had started slowly but by lunch time the streets were rivers. I watched it till I was hungry enough that it was worth getting wet and ran across the street for some ramen. My coat and hat were still wet on the hanger when someone knocked on the outer door so softly it could have been the rain wanting to hire me. They knocked again, then the door opened and closed.

I buttoned my jacket and straightened my tie. I unbuttoned my jacket again and opened the office door. There was a kid on the other side looking like he was waiting to see the principal. He was wearing a mass-produced suit at least a size too big for him and a green cap. He'd been clothed by the army. It didn't look like they'd done a good job of feeding him.

"You're younger than you sound on the phone, Hidaka-san," I said.

He had to stop himself saluting. He took his hat off and bowed. I bowed back.

"A friend called you, Kudou-san. He picked you out of the book because he said he met you during the war."

"What's your friend's name?"

"Kase."

"What did he do?"

"First Army, Third Independent Mixed Brigade."

"China?" I asked.

He nodded, but didn't say anything. You could tell a lot about a man from what he did during the war, especially if he'd enjoyed it.

"And you?"

"Ken Hidaka, Lance-Bombardier, Second General Army, Hundred-Forty-Fourth Division."

He stopped himself saying something at the end. It was probably 'sir'. They'd let me wear four stripes with two stars during the war to make my job easier. As far as the kid was concerned, I might as well still be wearing them.

I stared at him, trying to work out what a kid that small could have done in the artillery. He must have seen a lot of people thinking it.

"I was a radio operator," he said.

"I was in Naval Intelligence," I told him.

The kid nodded but didn't say anything. When a man says he's in Intelligence, no one with any asks him about it. The kid was smart enough to know the drill.

"So why did you come to see me, Hidaka-san?"

He must have realised I wasn't going to sit down until he did, so he sat. I sat too and lit a cigarette. I offered one to him but he didn't take it.

"I think someone's bribing soccer players." He said it very quickly, like he was afraid if he didn't he wouldn't say it at all.

"Are you a fan, Hidaka-san?"

He looked at his shoes. "I'm a player. Kase said you'd probably recognise my name."

I pointed at the paper. "I do, but there are a lot of Ken Hidakas in this city. I guess one of them had to be the one who kept goal for FC Tokyo. Your team's doing pretty well, isn't it? Who do you think is being bribed?"

"I don't know." He must have had fascinating shoes, he was looking at them more than at me. "Someone on the team, or maybe more than one person. I don't know. We're doing well, but we should be better, I know it. In practices we're the best team in the country, but when we play other teams the strikers miss shots, the midfielders screw up tackles and passes, and no matter how many times I tell them the defenders keep leaving holes in the formation and I can't save everything! Kase says he can't see it but I can!"

The agent next door would have heard him by now. He realised it too, and went back to memorising his shoes. This was a keeper who the papers said could know where a shot was going before the guy taking it did, but he couldn't have been more confused if he'd shown up to find his team playing baseball.

"Who's Kase?"

"Kase? He's a friend from the orphanage I grew up in. We met up again after the war and spent some time teaching kids there soccer. One day some scouts came by saying they were looking for players for the J-League and we ended up playing for FC Tokyo. He's a striker."

I let the way he said it slide, and asked, "Do you know why anyone would pay players to play badly but not so badly they throw games?"

"No," Ken said. "But wouldn't it be obvious if they did?"

I nodded. "Yes. Yes it would. What do you want me to do?"

This time he only glanced at his shoes. "Find out who's being paid. Find out who's paying them. Find out why. Then we can tell the police. Can you do that?"

"I can try."

Ken finally relaxed. It had only taken him ten minutes.

"How much should I pay you?"

"My standard rate is thirty-five thousand yen a day," I told him. "Plus expenses, but I'll tell you what those are."

"So how much for a week?"

A week's a good round figure for most clients, so I knew the answer without thinking about it: "Two hundred and forty-five thousand."

Ken took a cheque book out of his pocket and wrote it out in slightly less time than it would have taken him to count out the money in cash. I read it, hoping my bank had a good stock of magnifying glasses.

While he was writing the cheque, I'd taken a piece of typewritten paper out of a pile in my draw. Ken gave the kanji a brave go without the katakana to help him out, but eventually gave up.

"What's this?"

"It says that I'm working for you, in case I have to prove it to someone. Can you sign it there and there and put the date at the bottom. It's the seventh of October. I'll use this only as a last resort. I won't mention your name unless I absolutely have to."

"Maybe they'll think it's a different Ken Hidaka." Ken grinned at me and suddenly I couldn't believe he was past twenty.

"Maybe." I couldn't help smiling back. "And if you have a phone number I can contact you?"

I wrote down the number he gave me and gave him one of my cards. He stood up again so I stood up. He gave me a stiff bow so I gave it back and then followed him into the waiting room.

"I'll call you if I find out anything," I told him.

"Thank you, Kudou-san," he said.

Then he walked through the office door and down the corridor sounding like he wanted to run. I listened to him go, wondering what there was to thank me about. I hadn't done anything yet, and I already had a feeling that once I did, people weren't going to be bowing to me in the street. But I had nearly two hundred and fifty thousand yen on my desk from a kid who was so earnest I didn't think anyone could successfully say no to him, so I thought I'd better start earning it.

I smoked another cigarette and listened to the rain playing an inverted ride pattern on the window. Once I was sure lunch break was over I picked up the phone and called the _Asahi_. Two minutes of brittle-sounding secretaries before I heard a voice like a slow dance with Rita Heyworth.

"Hello, Youji. What can I do for you?"

"I was just calling to ask how your day was, Mayumi," I said.

"You should get better at lying to women, Youji. What do you want?"

"Are you still friendly with the guys on the sports desk?"

"Friendly enough that if I ever get bored of working here I'll let one of them propose to me," Mayumi answered.

"Supposing I wanted to place a bet, a big one, and I wanted to do it quietly. Who would I go to?"

"What's this about, Youji?" She wasn't talking like a movie anymore.

"Could you just ask them? As a favour to me."

She might have sighed, but I might just have been optimistic. "Okay, Youji. I'll ask and call you back."

She hung up without saying goodbye. I had a drink to stop myself staring at the phone. Then I read paper for stories about FC Tokyo and found out the word used most often to describe their playing was 'average'.

The phone only got to ring once before I picked it up. "Genji Koga," Mayumi said. "He's got an office in Shinagawa. He calls himself a chartered accountant, but he's you want to talk to."

"Thanks, Mayumi. I owe you dinner."

"Youji... they didn't tell me much about Koga, but they told me he's not someone you mess with. They said he'd be in prison if he didn't keep making witnesses disappear. Just be careful."

"I always am."

She hung up to stop herself from saying something else. I listened to the empty line for a minute, hoping it would tell me what to do next. I'd just put it down when the door opened and a hat and coat came in. It took me a while to realise there was someone inside them. He was a kid too, but this one was wearing a navy jacket under his coat and was solid enough to win a frigate action. He was very focussed, and that made me nervous. Focussed people do, I worry what happens to the people they focus on.

"Are you Youji Kudou, the investigator?"

"No. I'm Youji Kudou the acupuncturist. Lie down on the desk and I'll see if I can't find somewhere to stick something."

The kid took his hat off and shook water over my floor. "Did Ken Hidaka just hire you?"

"I'm sorry. If he was my client, part of my fee covers confidentiality."

"Did he hire you to look into match fixing?"

I didn't bother to answer this time. I gestured to the chair but he stayed standing in the doorway. If he stood there much longer I was going to have to fit him with hinges.

"Did he tell you he's taking money too?"

"Why would someone hire me to investigate match fixing if he's was in on it?"

He shrugged. "Maybe he wants a bigger cut."

"If you want to boss me about in my own office you'll have to pay me first." I stood up. "Who are you and why are you so interested in this anyway? Lose a bet on a sure thing?"

"Akira Hibana. I've got proof that Hidaka's taking money."

"Then take it to the police."

"The police won't help me," Hibana said, "but you can."

"How?"

He took a card out of his pocket and wrote something on it. "Meet me here at six," he said. "And come alone."

Then he put his hat back on and walked out of my office before I had a chance to tell him that saying stuff like that doesn't make you sound tough, it just sounds like you've seen too many movies.

I looked at the card. It was from a hotel in Shinjuku near the station, and it wasn't one of the ones that businessmen stay at. He'd written a room number on the back, along with the time of the meeting, in case I forgot during the next three hours. I could have spent the time sitting, listening to the jazz number the rain was playing in the street and wondering what Hibana was selling and why he hadn't told me the price, but I had to get to Shinagawa to place a bet.

_To Be Continued..._


	2. Sentimental Journey

Chapter Two: Sentimental Journey

Even in the rain, Shinagawa smelt of the sea. There was so much salt in the breeze coming off the bay I was worried my car might rust if I left it parked there too long. Genji Koga's office was in a building far enough from the water to be recognisably a building. If you got much closer, the buildings started to look like boats. Or maybe it was the boats turning into buildings; I couldn't decide.

The office block was so new they hadn't even finished building it yet. It was six floors high but looked as if they were trying to add at least another four. Koga's office was on the third floor. In fact it was the third floor. The sign the door agreed with Mayumi, but it didn't tell the full story. In half an hour I'd managed to find out that he and his associates did the books for half the private shipping operations in the ward and that clients came from all over the city to get his help with their finances.

I wondered how he said he did this with almost no staff. The office was nearly empty. There were desks but hardly any people sitting at them. You had to be really rich to afford this much empty space.

The people who were at the desks looked like they were working, but I didn't have time to see what they were working on. A secretary who I guessed had been hired for her pout rather than her shorthand appeared in front of me and bowed.

"Can I help you?"

I bowed politely and gave her one of my cards, the one that said I sold insurance. "My name is Youji Kudou, I'd like to speak to Koga-san."

"I'm sorry, Koga-san is very busy. If you would like to speak with one of his associates I can make you an appointment."

She wasn't impressed by being smiled at, I gave her that much. "I was hoping to speak with Koga-san personally as soon as possible. It involves an investment of several million yen, and my friend Kase recommended him personally."

She didn't even blink. "I'll see who is available. Wait here please."

I waited. No one else in the office had even looked up yet. I was starting to get the impression this was normal business for them.

The secretary wasn't gone long enough for me to stop looking around and think about lighting a cigarette. "You're very fortunate," she said. "Koga-san is free at the moment. Please follow me."

"Lucky me," I said, enjoying the view as she led me to Koga's private office.

Genji Koga was a grey man in a grey suit that tried to look less expensive than it was, and a smile that said that for the right price anything was possible. He was a big man, but his office made both of us look small. The walls were slabs of cold stone; the desk, everything on it and the chairs on either side were trying to be as white as possible. The trouble was, they weren't succeeding, leaving all the fixtures looking like dust motes, and Koga like the biggest one of all. I wondered how the cleaning staff remembered not to sweep him up when they came in. The only colour in the office came in through the window, which was big enough to make you think you should be able to look past the buildings, the boats and the bay and see all the way to America on a clear day.

"Kudou-san," he said, bowing, "I understand you wish to consult me on an investment. Please sit."

I sat in the welcoming leather chair and waited for him to relax into one that looked as if it had come straight from the office of the local American general. "That's right. I plan to start with an investment of a million yen and follow it with further investments of similar amounts or greater, depending on my returns. I was told you were the man to speak to."

"I think I am, Kudou-san" Koga smiled his friendly smile. "What do you wish to invest in?"

"Soccer."

Koga offered me a cigarette from the box on his desk I'd taken for an artistic smudge. He was still smiling, but his smile had changed. He was smiling at me like a torch singer smiles at the idea of an amorous billionaire with a weak heart.

"Which team?"

I lit the cigarette. "FC Tokyo."

Koga snapped his heavy silver lighter at me. "The Gas Men have not been playing well this year. I would recommend JEF Chiba for a more certain return."

I let him see me smile. "But if the Gas Men improve then I'll have a much greater return. What odds would you give me on them?"

He pretended to think. "In their next match... three to one against. Against JEF I would say five to one. They would make a much better investment."

"I have always gone with my gut, Koga-san," I said. "I have a good feeling about the Gas Men. They play JEF next month don't they? Then we should be able to find out which one of us is right, won't we?"

Koga stubbed out his expensive cigarette half-smoked. "I am sorry, Kudou-san. I will not be able to handle your investment after all. If you will excuse me, I must return to work."

He stood and gave me a short, convulsive bow. The bow I gave him was too deep and I knew it. When I straightened up, his secretary was standing beside me. Maybe she'd been summoned by the pattern his fingers had been drumming on the table since I'd insisted on favouring FC Tokyo over JFC.

"I'm sorry I wasted your time, Koga-san," I said. "I'll tell Kase you weren't right for me after all. Goodbye."

I left his office before he could respond. The people working outside still didn't look up, but I didn't mind. The only disappointment was that I never got a chance to ask the secretary her name.

I stopped for something to eat on the way back through Shibuya in a cafe near my building. It's patronised entirely by businessmen who want something to eat before they face their wives' cooking. I like eating there. The cigarette smoke is so thick you might as well eat with a blindfold on and no one gives you funny looks for chasing your noodles with a half a bottle of rye.

I ate, drank and thought about the answer I had. I didn't like it much. I didn't dislike it because it was the wrong answer, I was sure it was the right one. I didn't like it because it was one of those answers that insists on asking questions of its own. I had a feeling I was going to be getting a lot more of that kind of answer.

Avoiding them was easy. All I had to do was not drive to Shinjuku, not park near the station and not walk the rest of the way to the address Hibana had given me because the rain had stopped. You shouldn't feel sorry for a man who sticks his own head in the noose.

The hotel must have been the one of the only ones in Shinjuku that hadn't been bombed during the war. It was half a street long, two floors high, and the roof still seemed to be doing a good job of keeping the rain out. The front wasn't so good. It might have been a pretty pale green originally, but it had been on fire at some point and no one had gotten around to painting over the ugly stain.

I couldn't tell if the fire had reached the hotel lobby or whether they'd just redecorated. The fittings were suspiciously new and the smell of paint hung in the air like it was waiting for a bellboy to show it upstairs. Anyone waiting for a bellboy would be there a while, the only staff I could see was the man behind the desk. He was staring intently at a battered newspaper like he was trying to memorise it and didn't look up even when I was standing right in front of the desk. Maybe he was hoping I was a figment of his imagination.

"I'm here to see my friend Akira Hibana," I told him. "He said he was staying here."

The man turned the page of his newspaper like it was sacred to him. He might have jerked his head in the direction of a homemade sign next to him, but it might just have been a nervous twitch. The hotel register was lying open next to the sign. I leaned over and read Hibana's upside-down name along with his room number and that he'd checked in four days ago. The group of names underneath his were written in katakana but they read like the supporting cast of a Hollywood movie.

"Thanks for your help," I said.

Three steps up the cramped staircase I realised that whoever was at the top was having a party. Too many people talking loudly over each other sounded like the bay in a high wind, there was a pleasant contrast with the recorded female voice singing over the top, almost like they were doing it on purpose. I was so busy listening to the effect that I didn't realise till I'd reached Hibana's floor that the voices were speaking in English and being accompanied by Doris Day singing _Sentimental Journey_.

Half the corridor had been turned into a barracks room. About a dozen Americans were sitting, standing and lying around doing things that probably wouldn't make it into the heroic newsreels back home. They were drinking, smoking and telling jokes that I knew enough English to know they wouldn't tell in front of their apple pie baking mothers. They probably wouldn't tell them about the girls either. As I walked past, a few untidy young ladies helped each other past wearing uniform jackets and not much else.

Since I wasn't asking awkward questions about the girls, trying to take away their liquor or turn the music down, the Americans ignored me on my way to Hibana's door. I made an effort to be as subtle as he was probably expecting and knocked quietly. I got nothing in return, so I knocked louder. Still nothing.

I looked at my watch, just to be certain, then called, "Hibana-san? It's Youji Kudou."

One of the Americans wandered up to me. "Tell your friend he should come out so he can have some fun!"

"You might be right there," I said in my best English.

The American grinned at me and threw me a salute that would have had him reprimanded if he'd given it to a senior officer. I gave him a perfect one in return. That put him off. He gave me a more respectful nod and went back to his friends.

I turned the handle and pushed on Hibana's door. It was open, but only because someone had broken the lock.

The room was as small as I'd been expecting. All of the furniture inside looked well used and none of it matched. The wardrobe was imitating tradition, there was a carpet that could have been any colour when it was new but now was best described as brown, the table was so plain it could have come from anywhere, all it had going for it was that one leg was being supported by a roofing tile, and the bed had been 'lost' from a military base.

Hibana was lying on the bed on his chest. He might have been asleep, but I've never seen a man fall asleep fully dressed with his eyes still open. I tried not to look at his eyes. I made sure the door was closed behind me and did my best to go through Hibana's pockets without touching him. All I found was a few thousand yen, a book of matches and a photograph in a plastic protector. It was a picture of Hibana in a navy uniform looking as though he was waiting to be inspected by an admiral with an eye for detail and a magnifying glass. The admiral might not have been so impressed by the dark-haired teenage girl standing next to him, beaming with pride and doing her best to imitate her brother and stand to attention.

I went back into the corridor. The Americans' party was moving back into their private rooms, but I went back down the stairs at this end of the corridor just to be sure. I reached the lobby and thought about just walking out and not looking back, but too many people had seen me here, so I went over to the desk. The man behind it finally looked up when I told him to call the police.

The first patrolmen arrived ten minutes later. The Americans had been taken downstairs for questioning, but one of the smarter ones had told the others to keep their mouths shut until someone official arrived for them. Until then the only questions they were going to answer were name, rank and serial number. I wasn't so lucky. I was stuck outside Hibana's room while it was being photographed with two patrolmen watching me smoke. Both of them looked like they expected me to do something. I might even have done it if I'd known what it was.

The first detective through the door was younger than me, wearing a plain black suit but with colouring so patriotic it might have been deliberate. His hair was as red as the Rising Sun flag and the rest of him was as white as its background. I'd taken my uniform off years ago and never looked back, but he walked like he thought he was still wearing his and expected to be treated the same. All I'd have had to do to get on his good side was stand to attention.

The other one was older, with short dark hair and a scar on one side of his face that could have been from the war, but then he could have fallen over as a kid. He wore a tired overcoat he'd probably owned since it was new and was leaning against the wall like standing up straight wasn't important enough to waste the energy. He was also doing something complicated with his hands. For a while I thought he was making a meal of rolling a cigarette, but then he held up a small paper bird.

The senior detective went into the bedroom while the younger one stayed outside with me. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Youji Kudou." I repeated my name for the fifth time in ten minutes.

"He says he's a private detective," the nearest patrolman added.

"What are you doing here?"

"Be nice, Ran," the other one said, coming back out and slouching beside me. "This is Detective Sergeant Fujimiya. I'm Detective Lieutenant... well, everyone calls me Botan."

"Botan?"

Botan smiled and offered me the bird he'd made. "Just Botan. I like how it sounds. So, Kudou-san, you found the body? Talk me through it."

I'd already told my story to the patrolmen, but I knew I'd be doing it again. They'd compare notes later and make sure there wasn't anything that didn't match. If I was lucky, I wouldn't have to do it a third time. I wouldn't need to worry if I'd told them about Hidaka, Koga and the match fixing, but I didn't, and they knew there was something missing.

While we were talking, the police doctor and the two orderlies who drove the meat wagon pushed past us into the bedroom. They were long past this being anything new to them. They just nodded to Botan and got to work next to the fingerprint men.

"What did he want to tell you?" Fujimiya asked when I was done.

"He didn't tell me," I said. "I guess I'll just have to learn to live in ignorance."

The doctor came back out. "He... hasn't been dead long," he said, speaking like he started sentences without any idea where they were going. "Maybe... an hour. Cause of death... stabbed by something long and sharp at... the base of the skull. I heard they use ice picks for that in America. Whoever did it... knew what they were doing."

Fujimiya turned to the patrolmen. "Search the hotel, then start checking the street. Maybe the killer dropped it or tried to hide it."

One of the patrolmen bowed and left, the other said, "All Kudou-san had on him was a wallet, some cigarettes, matches and a lighter, a card holder and a card with this address on it."

"Which he was kind enough to explain." Botan looked at the list of what was in my pockets, then the list of what had been in Hibana's. "We'll keep that, if you don't mind. We'll also need to take your fingerprints so we can eliminate them, but that can wait. Did you find anything else in there?"

He called the last question through the door. One of the fingerprint men stuck his head out, and then the rest of him followed it. Either the job was more stressful than I thought or he had some of the powder in his hair.

"We've found a uniform in the wardrobe, sir," he reported, "and some navy identification."

"Ran, find out which ship he served in and talk to his superior officer," Botan said.

Fujimiya nodded, then we all had to get out of the way as the orderlies carried Hibana's body out of the room under a sheet. I didn't envy them the task of getting it down the stairs or past the reporters who had started to cluster by the exits.

"I think that's everything, Kudou-san," Botan told me. "We've got your number? Then you can go."

"We'll talk to you again after we've got some answers from the Americans," Fujimiya added. "Don't leave the city."

I sighed and put Botan's paper bird in my pocket. "Someone should teach him the difference between a witness and a suspect."

Botan smiled. "Oh, I don't think that's a decision a sergeant is qualified to make," he said. "He's happier if I just let him know. We'll be in touch, Kudou-san. Have a nice evening."

_To Be Continued..._


	3. Anything Goes

Chapter Three: Anything Goes

I drove south fast, as fast as I could. Too fast. I didn't slow down till I reached Chiyoda and realised that no one was following me. I took a few random turns, watching my rear view mirror more than the road ahead of me, but there really wasn't anyone there.

I pulled into a side street lined on both sides by trees big enough to hide the buildings and turned off all the car's lights. I took a half-empty bottle of rye out of the glove box and took a couple of swigs, hoping it would help me stop seeing Hibana lying in front of me.

When I'd calmed down, I took something else out of the glove box. It was the picture of Hibana with the girl I assumed was his sister. I lit a cigarette, keeping my lighter out to look at the photo by the flame, and wondered why I'd hidden it before the cops had arrived instead of leaving it for them. Then I took the book of matches I'd found in Hibana's pocket out and looked at that too. It was smooth and black, with a roman letter H in white on the front, and an address in Chuo on the back. I smoked the cigarette in the dark, wondering why a sailor with a sister like that would spend his leave in cheap hotels and places with such expensive matches.

After I got into Chuo, that curiosity was all that kept me going. Since the war had ended, the place had become a maze as all the canals which used to run through the ward had been drained and built over to make new roads and expressways. A lot of them went to some very interesting places, but none of them were the address I was looking for. Some of them didn't seem to go anywhere at all. After half an hour I was starting to wish they'd included directions on their matchbooks, then decided that you could fit the entire _Tale of Genji_ in a book of matches that big.

I found the place by accident just as I was starting to wonder how you ask directions from a beat cop without showing him the piece of evidence you stole from a murder victim. It was a long, low building that had probably started life as a warehouse, but it had been rebuilt from the ground up. The flat roof had been replaced with something tiled, sloped and traditional, the outside had been repainted a flawless white and the outer of the two sets of doors slid open sideways. This hadn't happened by accident, this was someone's dream. Someone loved this place, and I had a fairly good idea who. Above the doors in English then katakana was a string of red neon proclaiming that this was _Hirofumi's American Cafe_.

I checked my tie in the mirror, then lit a cigarette and walked across the road. I slid open the door and then slid it closed behind me. Then I had to stop and look around. It was like someone had commissioned a speakeasy for the Katsura Villa. The wooden floor was so dark it was almost black, and so polished I wondered if I was meant to take my shoes off. The ceiling was too high to be traditional, but too low to be western, and it had beams running across it, joining up the pillars which seemed to grow in the corners like art deco trees. The lighting came from paper lanterns with electric light bulbs in them; the paths between the tables were well lit, but the way the shadows were cast made it hard to see what was going at the tables themselves.

I was leaning on the solid block of the bar before I'd realised there were two more rooms, screened off by paper dividers which had been left half open. In one of them, a shadowed audience watched a spot-lit fusion of red and gold tease them over the whisper of a band. In the other, a dozen people were hypnotised by the spin of a roulette wheel and the pair of dice dancing on a craps table.

The bar was busy, so I didn't stop there for long. The guy behind it looked far too tidy to be keeping up with all his orders, but he was managing somehow. For all I knew he was just doing this job to pay for a chemical engineering degree, and mixing half a dozen drinks at once was a walk in the park in comparison.

As I reached the door to the floor show, the band kicked itself awake and the girl started to really sing. I got the feeling she wasn't there for her range, but she was good enough. She had blonde hair piled so high on top of her head it added an extra foot to her. Her red dress was cut low enough at the top that the phrase 'neck-line' didn't even come into it, and very high up one leg, as though she couldn't decide what her best feature was and had gone for both of them. I couldn't be certain if she understood the English she was singing now, but she made it look like she did, and the audience watching her hungrily in the darkness weren't interested in Cole Porter's observations on modern society as they proved his point for him.

I felt awkward standing there without a drink, so I went back to the bar. The bartender was free now. He had plenty of time to look me up and down as I approached. In the end his expression told me I'd be served, but he wasn't going to let me run a tab. There were a lot of expensive bottles behind the bar, but I didn't think I could explain this to Hidaka as an expense, so I just ordered a whisky and soda.

As the barman poured, I nodded towards the floor show. "She's nice. What do you call her?"

"I call her the boss' girl," the barman said. "She calls herself Schoen."

"So who is the boss?" I asked. "Is he actually called Hirofumi or is this place run by an American who just picked a Japanese name because the first letter would look good on his match books?"

"Hirofumi Takatori. Stick around and you might get to see him take his girl home."

I left him a tip and went towards the gambling saloon, wondering if I should recognise the name Takatori. It was the best lit room in the whole place, and it was full of Americans. They were all in much better uniforms than the sailors I'd seen at Hibana's hotel, and there were enough stripes and stars on them to put together a flag if they needed one in an emergency. They were being led by the middle aged Air Force general who was telling a story to each of them individually all at once as he prepared for his next shot. Looming over him was another officer I had to look at twice to make sure was his second in command not his bodyguard. The man was so big I didn't know how they'd ever managed to fit him in a cockpit, but maybe they couldn't and he'd lost all his hair except his moustache to make himself streamlined. He loomed over the general and dwarfed the girl in half a dress hanging off his arm, who fluttered her eyelashes at him whenever he remembered she was there for long enough to look down.

"This is a private party," said a voice behind me. "You're not invited."

It takes a special kind of talent to sound that arrogant in a language you haven't finished learning. I knew before I finished turning around that the guy was German, not American. He wasn't even trying to hide it either. He was taller than me, with hair a shade of red you only ever got in northern Europe. It looked like it hadn't been cut since the end of the war, but his black suit was pristine. He looked like he'd stepped out of a poster and really missed the trench coat and jackboots he'd been wearing in it.

"I was just looking for a friend," I told him.

"You don't have any friends in there," he responded. "Trust me."

He smiled at me. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the kind of smile you find on the other side of your door after a knock that comes at three in the morning.

I wasn't going to argue with that smile, so I went back to the bar, found a seat and drank my drink. It was a slow night, the conversations at the tables weren't loud enough to stand out from each other. I couldn't see anyone I knew, and didn't want to spend enough time looking in case someone started asking me questions before I had a chance to start asking mine.

I was half way through my next drink when the girl in half a dress leaned across the bar in front of me and ordered a gin and tonic.

"Let me get that for you," I said.

She gave me a look that women in full kimonos can't usually manage. "Thanks, but I can manage. And I can pay for them in yen."

"Are you drinking with the Americans?"

"You don't miss much."

"You're hard to miss."

She sipped her drink without taking her eyes off me. "What's your name?"

"Youji Kudou."

"I'm Maki, Kudou-san. Why are you so interested in the Americans?"

"I'm here looking for an old friend," I said. "I thought your friends might know him."

Maki let out a laugh that was close to a girlish giggle. "They aren't friends with us. They have people who report to them and people who work for them."

"So who are they?"

"I don't know most of their names," she replied. "But the one in charge is General Powell. He runs the local airbase like he's the Emperor. The big one is Colonel Nichol. The others watch us because they've been ordered to. He does it because he likes it."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Don't, Kudou-san. If you know what's good for you, don't think about any of them at all."

"Thanks for the warning."

She gulped down the rest of her drink. "I know you won't take it. I didn't. At least when you do something stupid, my conscience will be clear."

I gave her my best smile. "You know, you remind me of someone I used to know."

For a second, she looked confused, then she let herself smile back, and the smile was worth the effort of earning it. "Did she tell you not to be stupid?"

"Constantly," I said. "And she never let me buy her drinks either."

"You have better taste than I thought," Maki told me.

She put her glass back on the bar and strolled back towards the saloon. She paused at the entrance, then started walking slowly, one foot in front of the other with her hips swaying like she'd been taught by Veronica Lake. I would have kept watching, but she swayed past a man I'd taken for a cloud of cigarette smoke and I had to turn back to the bar before Genji Koga looked over and saw me.

"Give me a double shot of Jack on ice," I said to the barman. "And pour one for yourself."

He poured the drinks without speaking. I lit a cigarette and offered him one, but he lit one of his own. The evening was at its first low, when everyone's started to feel the effects of their first couple of drinks and haven't decided if they want to keep going or stop.

"Who are you, Kudou-san?" he asked me, taking his time with his drink. "All you've done since you've got here is ask questions. I know the people here very well. They're going to take offense if you keep that up."

"What do I call you?"

"Akihiko," he said. "That's the last answer you get out of me until you give some of your own. And don't give me anything about looking for a friend."

I put the drink down. "I'm an investigator." I pushed the photograph of Hibana across the bar with a five thousand yen note on top of it. "Have you seen this guy? His ship paid off but he didn't come home. His family's worried. I got a tip saying he was here."

Akihiko pushed the picture and the money back. "I haven't seen him. And Crawford-san would fire me if I took your money."

"Crawford-san? You said your boss' name was Takatori."

"Hirofumi-san owns the place. Crawford-san runs it for him. In here, he sees everything. He's got two rules: don't steal from the till and don't talk to the cops, and you're too close to a cop for my liking." His smile twisted into something a lot uglier. "Get out of here, Kudou."

I had the sudden feeling I was being watched, like an ice cube on my spine. I turned, afraid it was Koga, but it wasn't. Standing at the entrance to the saloon was an American in a cream three-piece suit that told me, if I'd been in any doubt, that Capone's tailor was still doing good business. He was too pristine to be real, everything from his polished patent leather shoes to his trimmed black hair was spotless. He wore a pair of wire-framed glasses, and the light blazing off the lenses made it impossible to see his eyes. He stood there, watching me, and slowly raised a white cigarette to his lips, inhaled, and let out a stream of smoke. He lowered the cigarette to his side and kept watching.

I turned back to my drink. I'd barely touched it and the ice had melted into it. My cigarette was just a stream of ash in my fingers.

"You're right," I said to Akihiko. "I think I'd better go."

I left before he had a chance to say anything and didn't look back. Outside I got to my car as quickly as I could and let myself get lost for half an hour on Chuo's brand new streets. By the time I got home I'd stopped feeling the ice cubes. I closed the door and locked it behind me, then I finished the bottle of rye and went to bed with the lights still on.

I dreamed I was in my office in my old uniform, translating intelligence reports which were song lyrics to Akira Hibana, who sat in the other chair with an ice pick through his neck, and an American in a cream suit stood in my doorway, watching us and smiling.

_To be continued..._


End file.
